Other Matters: Robert Schumann

Confession: Until recently, I could not get with Robert Schumann. I found him dull. The nineteenth century composer and pianist is, by general agreement, in the front rank of German romanticism, so I assumed that the shortcoming was mine. I was right. I wasn’t paying attention. What caused me to turn the corner on Schumann was “Waldesgesprach,” a piece of his lieder based on the work of the poet Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff. I heard the song for the first time at a recital by Phil Grothaus, a tenor, and Andrea Prentice, a pianist, who live in my town.
Sub-confession: I’ve also never cared much for lieder, art songs set to poetry, usually German. That began to change a few years ago when I acquired a boxed set of Schubert lieder sung by the astounding Dieter Fischer-Dieskau with Gerald Moore at the piano (This CD is a generous sampler). I had always loved Schubert, but was put off by anyone’s lieder. Fischer-Dieskau turned that. Now, I am hooked on “Waldesgesprach” and warming to Schumann because of Mr. Grothaus’s and Ms. Prentice’s charming negotiation of its intriguing harmonies, which to my ear put Schumann far ahead of his time. He wrote it in 1840 during a flurry of lieder composition.
This experience helped me to understand why composers whose harmonic palettes I admire, among them Brahms, Faure and Elgar, were inspired by Schumann. I can’t imagine that Debussy and Ravel did not also study him. Go here to listen to recordings, in their entirety, of several artists’ interpretations of the song. They include Fischer-Dieskau with Alfred Brendel at the piano. See how you like it. If you think it took me too long to open my ears to Schumann, you’ll be right.
What does this have to do with jazz? Nothing, unless you accept that there is no such thing as jazz harmony. All harmony in jazz was first used by the great composers from before Bach to Stravinsky. To extrapolate loosely, you might say: no Schumann–no Tadd Dameron.
For a comprehensive biography and a nifty picture of Schumann, go here.This CD has Fischer-Dieskau with his ideal accompanist Gerald Moore (every classical singer’s ideal accompanist) singing “Waldesgesprach” and several other pieces of Schumann lieder even better than he did with Brendel.

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Comments

Doug’s experience of Schumann is somewhat like mine. For a long time, Schumann struck me as superficial and insipid. Now I see I just didn’t dig deep enough to see his subtlety. I started to appreciate him about a year ago after hearing Waldszenen on the radio, played by Sviatoslav Richter. Interestingly, Waldszenen is meant to be one of Schumann’s less important works, written at the end of his career, but to me they characterize the juxtaposition of sweet yearning and descending darkness that makes his music so poignant. Some are very modern, especially Vogel als Prophet and Verrufene Stelle. Along with interesting harmonies, there are lots of tricky rhythms and changing meters.

Schumann was indeed ahead of his time, especially when you consider that his direct contemporary was Mendelssohn. Informing his lieder in addition to his deep understanding of the piano was his literary sensibility. BTW did you know that he was an early music blogger (so to speak)? He founded his own journal to report on, criticize, and espouse new music.

Doug Ramsey

Doug is a recipient of the lifetime achievement award of the Jazz Journalists Association. He lives in the Pacific Northwest, where he settled following a career in print and broadcast journalism in cities including New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, San Antonio, Cleveland and Washington, DC. His writing about jazz has paralleled his life in journalism... [Read More]

Rifftides

A winner of the Blog Of The Year award of the international Jazz Journalists Association. Rifftides is founded on Doug's conviction that musicians and listeners who embrace and understand jazz have interests that run deep, wide and beyond jazz. Music is its principal concern, but the blog reaches past... Read More...

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